Snapdeal to help sellers get loans worth Rs 1,000 crore by March 2016

New Delhi: E-commerce major Snapdeal today said it aims to help sellers raise about Rs 1,000 crore in loans through its 'Capital Assist' initiative. Launched in August last year, Capital Assist helps sellers meet their working capital requirement as they scale their businesses on the Snapdeal marketplace platform.

NBFCs and banks like Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, RBL, Religare and L&T Finance are part of this initiative.

"We have already helped sellers secure Rs 200 crore in loans through Capital Assist. By March 2016, we aim to take this to Rs 1,000 crore," Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl told reporters here.

Snapdeal, which has about two lakh sellers onboard, had earlier said it aims to empower over 1,000 of its sellers in the next one year through this platform and extend the network to 25 banks and NBFCs by end of this year.

Snapdeal, which competes with the likes of Flipkart and Amazon, has also launched a report in partnership with KPMG to highlight the importance of the e-commerce sector for growth of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India.

About 73 percent SMEs felt that e-commerce enables them to understand their markets better and 46 percent said they saw increase in business through listings on online marketplaces.